Friday, January 20, 2017

Northern Ireland child abuse inquiry singles out police and church

Police were guilty of a “catalogue of failures” over the abuse of
boys at a Belfast care home run by a paedophile ring, a comprehensive
report into child mistreatment across Northern Ireland has found.

The historical institutional abuse inquiry, established in 2014,
found that a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) investigation into sexual
abuse at the Kincora care home in east Belfast was “inept, inadequate
and far from thorough”.

The report, released on Friday, also accused the Catholic hierarchy
in Ireland of ignoring repeated warnings about a serial paedophile, Fr
Brendan Smyth, who sexually assaulted and raped dozens of young victims.

The implications of the Smyth scandal and other clerical abuse in the
region were so serious that a senior Catholic cleric was due to discuss
the findings with the pope later on Friday.

Kincora care home was run by a number of paedophiles whom it was
alleged were agents of the state. They included the prominent Orange
Order member William McGrath, who was accused of being an informer for
MI5 and special branch in the 1970s, spying on fellow hardline
loyalists.

At least 29 boys were sexually abused by McGrath, the Kincora
housemaster, and others at the home. One boy is said to have killed
himself by jumping off a ferry into the Irish Sea in the late 1970s
following years of abuse. Three senior staff at Kincora – McGrath,
Raymond Semple and Joseph Mains – were jailed in 1981 for abusing 11
boys.

The retired judge Sir Anthony Hart, who chaired the inquiry, said if
the RUC had carried out a proper investigation into Kincora many of the
victims might have been spared. He said 39 boys were abused byMcGrath
and others running Kincora at the height of the Troubles.

But Hart said the notion that the home was a homosexual “brothel”
used by the security services to entrap paedophiles to spy on
influential political figures was without foundation.

Controversially, he also dismissed the notion that McGrath was a
state agent. “We are satisfied that McGrath was never an agent of the
state. William McGrath was a sexual pervert who had political views of a
bizarre type.”

Hart was extremely critical of a number of individuals who had
previously made claims about Kincora, including the former army
intelligence officer Colin Wallace, who first raised allegations of a
paedophile ring at the home.

The
judge said the cooperation of the current Police Service of Northern
Ireland was in “marked contrast to the unwillingness of some
individuals”.

He stressed that all requests by the inquiry for classified files
relating to Kincora were “honoured” by government and security agencies.

Hart said there was “no credible evidence” to support allegations
that a paedophile ring including senior British establishment figures
had abused children in Kincora. The report had “stripped away decades of
half-truths masquerading as facts in relation to Kincora”.

The inquiry, which sat at Banbridge courthouse in County Down for two
years, investigated children’s care homes and institutions from the
Northern Ireland state’s foundation in 1922 to 1995.

During the Kincora section of the inquiry it emerged that MI5 and MI6
were legally represented at Banbridge. Critics of how the hearing into
Kincora had been framed expressed concerns the government would use the
Official Secrets Act to prevent the inquiry gaining access to files from
MI5 and MI6.

Among the other scandals highlighted in the report was that
surrounding Fr Brendan Smyth. He was a paedophile priest whom the
Catholic hierarchy kept moving around parishes in both Ireland and the
United States long after it knew about his abuse of children in places
such as west Belfast.

The report severely criticised the Catholic Church’s behaviour.

“Father Brendan Smyth was able to carry out widespread sexual abuse
of children, including some children resident in homes investigated by
the inquiry, due to the failure of branches of the Roman Catholic church
to properly address his behaviour from before he was ordained as a
priest, despite clear warnings,” it said.

“There was repeated failure to assess the risk he posed to children,
to confine him to his abbey, to thoroughly investigate allegations of
abuse, to notify the police and social services, and to share
information between dioceses and report matters to the appropriate civil
and ecclesiastical authorities.”

The
report also criticised an order of Catholic nuns, the Sisters of
Nazareth. Of the homes they ran in Belfast and Derry, it said: “In each
of the four homes, some nuns engaged in physical and emotional abuse
against children. Emotional abuse was widespread in all homes.”

Hart and his team found that a disinfectant was used in baths in the
orphanages. He said there was a significant number of cases of sexual
abuse involving priests and lay staff. Many of these incidents were
known to members of the clergy, who did nothing to stop them, the report
said.

The leader of Ireland’s Catholics, archbishop Eamon Martin, said he
would discuss its findings with Pope Francis when he met the pontiff in
Rome later on Friday.

He said the report “reminds us that much work remains to be undertaken in this regard”.

Public hearings were held into 22 institutions across Northern
Ireland which were run by the state, local authorities, the Catholic
church, the Church of Ireland, and other voluntary organisations. Hart’s
report runs to 2,300 pages and contains 10 volumes of findings and
testimonies.

The NSPCC children’s charity said: “This inquiry has shed light on
horrendous and widespread abuse carried out against children in Northern
Ireland in the past. Institutions must now be held to account for the
prolonged, systematic failings against the children in their care. It is
right that the survivors receive the justice they deserve and we
support the recommendation for redress.”